Randomers #1

Righto. I feels like trying something different for a bit. Iv got this giant ass stack of comics iv picked up from car boots over the years and I'm never going to read them if I don't also somehow funnel them into mad hat out put. So here we are. Ill see if can blast threw them. Thought we mad hats do have an odd habit of only doing one part of something but promising the world. Almost none of them are connected to each other and there mostly books for characters I dinny ken any thing about. Were going in blind !

hope runs from youngblood's disease sufferers

 

 

Cable and x force 009

written by frank tieri art by salvador larroca

Cable and x force. More like uncanny avengers. Amaright ? The entirety of this comic is just the uncanny avengers team going to look for hope. Cables daughter not the awesome blue light of green lantern fame. It was ok. I think. As a stand alone issue that I went completely blind into it worked fairly well. Like id probs be pretty pissed if I was buying this monthly and this was all there was to the issue. Though saying that marvel has been hella cranking books out of late. So maybe the wound dosent cut that deep.

So the uncanny avengers are bobbing along looking about for hope. Having the banter. There cool dudes those uncanny avengers. I can totally see why folk could hate them though. Like ayes they can come off as cunts in there own book. Bit shites gotten epicly space Gothic real in there book. So I at least let it slide over there. Here not so much. Like. The main problem with the team is the mutants on it. Because as we've hopefully discussed before. Most mutants and almost all x men are utter bastards. To a man. Its this incredibly marvely thing. That they continue to push mutants as this feared and hated minority whilst simultaneously making mutants act like complete dicks to everyone and every thing in existence.

Hope herself is a bit of a bam here too. Mind controlling what I assume from context to be her foster parents into driving her about. Though to be fair. My only exposure to hope was from a vs x and from messiah complex if that was indeed her as a baby. I don't know. X men continuity. Fuck it. So her actions in this issue could be incredibly in character for her. Its just once again mutant kind dosent come off looking well. So hopes powers are to absorb other powers ? Cools. Kinda makes rouge a bit redundant when hope dosent even have to physically touch a dude to steal his powers. But again x men continuity. Fucked if I know what rouges current or actual deal is. Points to the comic though as hope absorbs the powers of purple girl. Didny ken there was a purple girl. Nice bit of z list usage there.

Oddly captain America is shown in a bad light. Though its just a fillery continuation of his beef with havok. Like. Ayes havok is the leader of the uncanny avengers. Fucked if I know why. Well. Political reasons. To show mutant and man working together and to piss off scott summers. Its just a bit dumb likes. Aye fair play you dinny need cap to lead ALL the avengers teams. But dinny just have him on the roster as an underling to add credibility to your pr stunt. Cause it leads to pish like this. Cap is the living legend leader of men. There's no getting around that. Though. I will say. Havok dose rock a mean gendo ikari turtle neck jacket look back in the main uncanny book. So. Points there.

Its really more of a banter based issue than a fight em up. But there's a little bit of action here and there. Its fairly stupid though. Hope makes cap and havok fight with purple girls powers as you'd expect. Its fairly meh. We didn't learn anything from it we didn't already know. Hopes finisher is using masterminds powers to summon this red skull galactus thing. Its cool ? Mibby ? Its an illusion that cap just one shots like a proper pro. Though it did serve as a reminder for me that the red skull is STILL out there running about with professor X's brain in his head. I mean. Nobody has gotten on this. Nobody has put a stop to the RED SKULL running about the world as one of the most powerful psychics ever. You'd think that be caps singular driving goal right now. But no. he's cutting about on a mutant publicity team checking up on this teenage girl. Because her dad is apparently at the top of the worlds most wanted list. Yeah. Scott summers is out there right now leading a mutant revolution. And folk are worried about what the human fridge cable is up to. ALSO THE RED SKULL IS STILL OUT THERE WITH PROF X'S BRAIN.

So yeah. I liked this issue ! Not enough to actively seek out cable and x force. God no. but I didn't hate what I read and there were cheeky wee bits of choice banter strewn about. Early on there's a gid bit from havok about x men and there constantly changing loyalty's that I had a good chuckle at. Mutants and especially x men being the worst humans to ever live and all that.

The Mad and Hat Pirates Year in Review Awards Review Part Deux: The Squeakqueling

Proudly presented by Jim’ll Fix it and Romney/Ryan 2012

*NB Some categories have been replaced. A surprising amount have not.

Best puzzle platformer involving Blocks and Pulling

Fallblox

Best Use of Stan Lee

Rupert Murdoch (The Leveson Inquiry)

Most Awesome Dunban

Dagran (The Last Story)

Least Awesome Dunban

Vaan. Bloody Fucking Vaan.

Most disappointing Villain Accent

Jim Moriarty (Not quite so mentally mental as at the end of series 1)

Most Obvious Villain

6-way tie: Therius(The Last Story), Jirall(The Last Story), Count Earl Arganan(The Last Story), The Drizz’t Twins(The Last Story), Zangurak(The Last Story).

Least Obvious Villain

Dagran(The Last Story)

Best Game Set in 2012

Persona 4

Most Understated Psychic Powers

Dark Phoeniclops

Best Comic to base a Barbie on.

Sword and Sorcery (Amethyst. Seriously, Feminism would be much further along if little girls used lines like “Some grandfather of mine must have been careless where he spilled his seed” while playing with Barbies like I used to.)

Greatest thing Ever

Kingdom Hearts DDD: Riding FUCKING MONSTRO in a boss fight (#fuckyeahimonawhale)

Dirtiest Sounding Name

Pandora’s Tower

Most Shades of Grey

Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Most What the fuck is going on with Cyclops right now?

Seriously. How come he’s so damn evil these days? He’s the one who didn’t want to get with Jean because he was so paranoid about a premature discharge from his deadly eyebeams. Now he’s a fucking rogue state. Is he planning on changing his name to Kim Il Summers? Or is he going to go full Magneto and only answer to Cyclops? Also, bear in mind that he fell in love with the Phoenix, and not really Jean (there was a whole thing when she came back about it, and how she couldn’t live up to that) so now that he’s been the phoenix...Also, you know how Scarlet Witch had to use up the phoenix force (which Galactus described as “all the worlds yet to be born”) to restore mutants? I mean, it’s not like she can just wave a magic wand and say “More Mutants” and everything’s sorted...except that’s EXACTLY how they got into this mess in the first place.

David Bowie Spotting

Zigzagoon, Balthier, Emperor Mateus, Miles Edgeworth, Liquid Snake, Louis Cyphre, Lucifer, Lucifel, Helel, Louisa Ferre, Demyx.

Life of Pi: or how I learned that to stop caring and pass two hours that I’ll never get back.

Life of Pi is life affirming and shit. There’s the review that everyone wants to read. They got that half right.

This is a very pretty movie. The plot is not very good. Also, there’s surprisingly little tension for a film about a boy trapped in a boat with a tiger. This is largely because the tiger is a metaphor for primal rage and the like. Hell, the twist at the end all but says this. But yeah, the movie can largely be summed up as “ah, who cares about empirical evidence, I like Jesus and all his pals and I think I’m better/more bohemian than you”. It’s like a self help book about “finding yourself”. What people need to learn is that all you need to find yourself is a Japanese exchange student with ties to the dojima clan to life coach you into a better person. If you’re very lucky, something horrible will happen and you’ll become an x-men.

Speaking of X-Men, Life of Pi (along with every other “high brow” film) had a trailer for Salman Rushdie’s new film “Midnight’s Children” which seems to be equally life affirming and Indian (I swear that there’s needs to be a better word for “like slum-dog but not as good”) except that I’m not sure what it’s about. Two kids are born at midnight on the day of India’s independence, but because one’s rich and one’s poor, the doctor switches them to even things out for the new India. According to Indian Science, inheritance is an inherited trait. Anyway, nouveau riche seems to grow up to be a cunt, and nouveau pleb (who has rich people genes, so he’s better?) he...well here’s where I’m not sure. They trailer makes mention of this a lot, but doesn’t actually show it. Apparently, Pleb can give the people around him superpowers. And not like subtle ones, flying and shit. So yeah, Indian x-men.

So at one point Pi gets to an island full of meerkats, which is shaped like a sleeping man, and there’s this lotus flower malarkey that was kinda foreshadowed way at the start so I immediately called dream sequence. But it kinda wasn’t. See, the story pi’s been telling is a delusion full of metaphor he made up to assuage his guilt at having had to kill things (hence the tiger).  Pi is a murderer. He killed a man, and hid it from his family. But hey! That doesn’t change anything! In either story all the peeps end up dead, what does it matter if it was in a shipwreck or by a vengeful teenager! Spiritualism! The worst part is, the actually true story sounds like a much better film. Less pretty obviously, but with, y’know, characters and a plot and tension.

So yeah, don’t watch life of pi. I’ve spoilt it. Or rather, there was a monkey, a tiger, and a blog post, and the tiger posted info about a film on the blog while I sat enthralled by it’s predatory majesty and the monkey didn’t like it.